[clue-tech] Mephis linux

[Roy J. Tellason]

On Thursday 20 November 2008 02:31:28 pm Bruce Ediger wrote:
> On Thu, 20 Nov 2008, Roy J. Tellason wrote:
> > My first linux box was a K6-200 (which I still have!  I only stopped
> > using that as a server because of HD issues),  and my first install was
> > Slackware 4.0 on a 1G or so drive and I installed *everything*,  so I
> > could check it out.  This was back in 1999.  Now a complete install takes
> > several CDs worth
>
> Hey!  I have an old Gateway K6-400.  I did have Slackware 10, with a 40Gb
> disk in it.

That's bigger than anything I have,  currently.  Yeah,  I run a lot of older 
hardware here...

> I decided to check if modern distros did have The Bloat,  so I looked up the
> oldest Slackware I could find on a CD: 3.2, ca 1995. 

I'm not sure of the version.  The oldest one I have is in the pocket in the 
back of a book that's titled something like "Build the perfect internet site 
using Linux" which is what got me all fired up about linux in the first 
place.  :-)   I never opened that disc pocket because when I started talking 
about it in the fido LINUX echo was when I got sent that Slack 4.0 set (the 
Walnut Creek set) and I installed that instead.  The set also comes with 3.9,  
but I never did anything with that.

> I had to find a couple of floppies to get the initial boot, 

Yeah,  I remember having to make those,  and also a "rescue floppy" as well 
for those earlier installs,  and ended up never using most of them once I got 
the install done.

> but I was able to put Slackware 3.2 on a 3 Gb drive.  Everything in 3 Gb. 

It didn't take me nearly as much space in my case.

> You can tell that Linux wasn't really a server candidate in those days: not
> even telnetd runs by default.

I dunno,  I got plenty of things active all at once.  And caught some grief 
for doing that but it wasn't that big of a deal because it wasn't 
a 'net-connected machine at the time,  and in fact not for some time after 
that.

> I got "lspci" and OpenSSH to compile with only modest problems, upgraded to
> kernel 2.0.40 and XFree86 4.7.99, and it seems to work fine.

I'm not sure what I started compiling back then,  most of what I was running 
was already there,  and it was a while before I started worrying about 
downloading more.

> > though I am quite selective about the packages that get installed. 
> > Better? Maybe a little,  but there's also a lot of eye candy and other
> > junk in there I could just as easily do without
>
> I can testify to the truth of that after the Slackware 3.2 experiment. I
> think I'll do an "expert" install next time around.

I can't remember the last time I *didn't* do one of those.  They seem to think 
you'll need a bunch of stuff like vi (several versions) and all sorts of 
other stuff that I can seemingly do quite well without.

> I looked into installing the all-assembly "asmutils", but I think there's
> just a wee bit too much incompatibility.  My guess is I'll have to retain
> all the stupid Gnome and KDE libraries just to run Firefox, even though I'm
> a dedicated TWM user, and I don't use any other "desktop environment"
> rubbish. 

I haven't really messed with any of the other window managers.  There was one 
(I forget which now) that was turned on by default even though a bunch of 
them are installed,  a real barebones one,  and I didn't care for it much,  
the time or two I encountered it by forgetting to specify during the install 
which one I wanted to use.

These days I mostly stick with KDE.  I've tried gnome,  and just don't care 
for it too much.

I'm not sure which libraries firefox might need in your case.

Oh yeah,  and more fun -- when I set up that first machine I didn't install X 
at all,  I did that later,  which means that I didn't have the benefit of 
whatever the install package offered to get me going.  The parameters for the 
monitor were the hardest part.  I also didn't have a sound card in that box 
for the longest time,  so I ended up having to do that the hard way too,  
with isapnp and all that fun stuff.  :-)

I'm overall pretty happy with Slackware,  but am also thinking that I might 
want to get to know another distro or two as well,  so that I can get people 
who are stuck on windoze off of it and have something easy enough to offer 
them as an alternative.  The general feeling I get these days is that Ubuntu 
is the recommended choice,  but that's gnome for a UI by default,  so maybe 
not,  or maybe I should check out the different versions,  once I get another 
machine set up here to play with a bit.  When I can find the time.  How the 
heck to some people get a good handle on what the differences are between 
distros?

Speaking of which,  that's a question that almost got me into a bunch of 
trouble back in the fidonet linux echo days,  though I was quite careful in 
my phrasing -- I got accused by a couple of folks of asking "which is 
_better_" and in effect trying to start some kind of a flamefest or 
something.  :-)  I'm not asking that at all,  just what the differences are,  
and that's something that I've yet to get that much of a handle on,  besides 
really obvious stuff like package managers.  Is there some site out there 
that points up the differences,  or maybe explains what a particular distro 
is aimed at,  or similar?



-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
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Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
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